


Covered With Her Feathers

by duckbunny, Istezada



Series: The Celestial (Trade) Union [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A catechism, An apple - Freeform, An unexpected conversation, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Love Story, Reckless Expansion of Cosmologies, don't mind us, enemies to friends technically, investigative theology, post-Armagedidn't, we're inventing theology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 11:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckbunny/pseuds/duckbunny, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: Involving a demon, a meeting with the Divine, a catechism, an apple, the precise and deliberate use of a name, and rather more wings than expected.





	Covered With Her Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so... Duckbunny invented The Celestial (Trade) Union and surrounding events and was chortling at me about it, and then my brain started having ideas, and then Duck was kind enough to allow me to run amuck. There is a lot about the Union that I don't know, and possibly hasn't been invented yet, but a few things should be sufficient to explain matters until Duck's life cooperates enough to let him post things.
> 
> 1\. Union meetings are called Trees. At least one angel and at least one demon is required for a Tree. At Tree, everyone shares apples in memory of Adam I and Adam II.
> 
> 2\. Prospective Union members, when they're sure they want to join, are required to submit to a catechism of sorts, in which the Authority Figure demands that the Lesser Being return to work in a variety of ways, and to further the War, Famine, Pestilence (for old time's sake, and thoroughness), Pollution, and Death, which the Lesser Being refuses to do, followed by the less scripted question of "What's so great about Earth that you won't go back to work?" and the Lesser Being's answer to that.
> 
> 3\. This story takes place eight years after Armagedidn't and seven years after God appeared to Aziraphale and gave him the beginnings of what would become the Union. The catechism and apple sharing, by this point, have pretty well established forms, which is fast for beings that have existed since before time began. Pepper got impatient and invented the catechism, see.
> 
> 4\. Unrelated to the Union or to Tree: Crowley is incredibly snarky, inside his head and out.

One of the best things about Tree, Crowley mused as he entered his flat, was feeding apples to angels. Any old apple would do. They got so _twitchy_ about it, as if Western European tradition actually had anything to do with what The Fruit had looked like in the garden six thousand years ago. (It had not, for the record, actually been an apple. Crowley should know. He’d been there.) Any old apple would do, but his favorite—his absolute favorite, and one he was willing to go out of his way to find—was the Cox’s Orange Pippin. No one actually called it by its full name and when else was he going to get the chance to get a bunch of angels to eat Cox?

Seriously. It was a highlight of his day.

The demons, mostly, weren’t scared of eating apples. They’d had a first-hand, up-close-and-personal (one might even say a “crash course”, though Crowley wouldn’t recommend saying it to any of the demons of his acquaintance) introduction to and explanation of the difference between good and evil. They could be abrasively smug about how much they didn’t mind eating apples. Getting them to eat Cox was pretty enjoyable too, now that Crowley thought about it.

He was pretty sure he’d caught Reshmanott twinkling about it today, which was new. Reshmanott was a new member of the Union and still apt to sneer at his angelic counterparts while passing the bowl around. If he was developing a sense of humor, he just might stick.

The garden room shivered as he walked past and he could _feel_ their relief when he ignored them.

That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. They practically sagged with it.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that!” he snapped, turning on his heel and glaring at them all.

They sprang back into proper form, trembling in their boxes and pots.

Better.

Crowley eyed them for several more seconds before sniffing. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he growled and went on his merry way to the kitchen. He’d gone overboard in the acquisition of apples and had several Cox leftover from Tree to stick in the fridge. Aziraphale hadn’t been able to attend the meeting this time for… some reason or other. Maybe he’d pop over and have a small Tree with the angel later. It’d been a while since they’d done that, just the two of them.

Apples dealt with, Crowley spent some time puttering around in the kitchen. He took off his glasses and left them on the counter. He refilled the mister, and then made the plants wait while he, manually, wiped down the sink. He could have miracled it, obviously, but the anticipation period was good for the plants, so he took his time.

The ficus, when he re-entered the garden room, was doing much better where he’d put her in the corner. Couldn’t fall over from nerves, there. She trembled through his inspection, but was otherwise in perfect condition. She hadn’t even dropped any leaves in response to the move. Good. Everyone said ficuses were “fussy”, but really it was all in the positioning. They just needed a little more… structure… than other plants. “Acceptable,” Crowley grudgingly admitted and moved on.

There honestly hadn’t been any issues for months and Crowley had to hold himself back from radiating the sense of satisfaction that was beginning to relax through him.

Then he saw the spathiphyllum. “You!” he snarled. “Do you _realize_ you’re the first Peace Lily I’ve ever had. Do you _realize_ what you’ve… of course, you do. It’s not like I don’t warn you all, is it? Clear set of rules here. Flourish or die. It’s not complicated. Is it?” he hissed at the rest of the room, watching the plants quake agreeably. “So bloody simple and I’m not the type to expect things of you that I don’t explain beforehand. Personal fucking experience with _that_ issue...”

He was getting off-topic here.

He picked up the spathiphyllum’s pot and glared at the leaves. “You’re not over-watered. You’re not too dry. You’re just… what? Bored? Felt like pushing your luck?”

Crowley snorted and wandered back into the kitchen.

Most flats in London do not have garbage disposals. More of an American thing, those. But it was a very convenient (and deliciously, terrifyingly _noisy_ ) way to dispose of faulty plant-life. So Crowley had one. He couldn’t remember, now, if he’d had it specially installed or if it was just there because he wanted it.

“I was _going_ to give him to the angel,” he announced to the garden room, returning with the empty and cleaned pot and setting it back where it had been a moment ago. “But noooooo...”

And then he almost fell over into the umbrella plant.

There was someone…

Something…

Some Presence…

… standing outside his door.

It would never, ever do, to dis-corporate out of sheer fright in front of his plants. For preference, he wouldn’t bloody yelp in response a knock on his door either, but it was too late to stop _that_ unfortunate event from occurring. Crowley dragged a breath into lungs that only technically needed it (and he was very good at ignoring technicalities, he’d been doing it for millennia, and no, he absolutely was not stalling) because he _recognized_ that Presence.

He did. He hadn’t felt it for a little over two thousand years and _then_ it had been as wrapped and shrouded and disguised as it was possible for Her to be. He’d spent a month in the Palestinian desert tempting… being _allowed_ to tempt… and talking and questioning Her in the form of a man. Satan hadn’t even been… well, he had been furious that it hadn’t worked, but no one was really _surprised_. There’d always been the chance, however slim. But no…

It had been the most exhilarating and terrifying experience of his existence. (Well. Until the day, a few years later, when He’d shown up in Hell and gotten into a staggeringly one-sided fist-fight with Satan and Death itself, and then disappeared again. _That_ was infinitely more terrifying. It’d been a while before Satan admitted that He’d wandered off with the keys.)

And now, approximately thirty-eight Earth seconds ago, She had, for some reason, decided to turn up on his doorstep and _knock on his bloody door_ like a… person. It was so exciting to learn that there were new depths of dread that the demonic mind could attain and comprehend.

Thirty-eight… forty seconds he’d been keeping _Her_ waiting.

Crowley stared. Gulped. Straightened his shoulders (for all the good it’d do him).

And… went to open the door.

She looked shockingly human, really, and nothing at all like the form that was now Him (Still Her, but also Him—simultaneously and for the rest of eternity, apparently. And humans thought _they_ had complicated gender issues…). But Crowley only got a minutely split second’s glimpse of Her features before his knees and spine figured out what was going on and he found himself crumpled to the floor at Her feet. 

Velvety dark skin, intricately braided hair decorated with glowing beads (or possibly small suns), eyes the color of… no. He hadn’t seen Her eyes. He could not have seen Her eyes. Apple thing or no apple thing, that was not for him. Not anymore.

“Good afternoon,” She said.

Crowley, with extraordinary good sense, shook. He’d forgotten what Her voice sounded like.

He’d _definitely_ forgotten what Her touch felt like.

Her hand touched his shoulder, silently encouraged him to straighten, to sit up.

He obeyed. Questioning, he’d done for millennia. Actual defiance wasn’t so bad, once he’d got used to the idea. Actual defiance in Her actual, physical Presence, however, was a trifle beyond his capabilities.

What was _She_ doing here? _Here_ , of all places.

“You can ask,” She said softly, as Her hand moved from his shoulder to brush gently (oh, so gently) across his hair.

He flinched. At the statement. At the touch. At Her voice.

 _Now_ he could ask?

He managed, after several attempts, to look at Her feet.

It didn’t dis-corporate him.

Okay, then.

“What…” His tongue flicked over his lips, scenting the unique, indescribable holiness less than a meter away from him. “What are you… Why are you here?”

Holiness doesn’t smile, per se, but Crowley was sure he could smell the expression when She answered him.

“I’m here to share communion with you,” She said, like it wasn’t the most obscene, preposterous, laughable sentence ever uttered on the planet since its creation.

She…

Crowley swallowed.

“Y…”

“Maybe in the kitchen? Unless you’d prefer to do it here…”

Kitchen. With the apples. Right.

He could do that.

He had knees around here, somewhere. Feet. A spine. An entire corporeal body that, theoretically, was capable of transporting him to the kitchen. Where the apples were.

Right.

It took him a moment to to pull himself upright. She waited. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of impatience, which was probably good. Crowley was having enough trouble not cowering before the carefully banked heat and radiance of Her Presence.

But She’d asked him to sit up. Suggested he stand. Walk, even.

So he did that instead and stepped aside from the open door.

“Come… in?” he said and watched Her feet step into his flat.

“Thank you.”

“Ngk,” he responded with, he thought, commendable fluency and coherence, and led Her through the garden room ( _everything_ instantly grew at least an inch, even the ficus) and into the kitchen.

“Um.”

“May I sit?”

“S… sure. Yeah. Um. You can… do that.”

“Will you join Me?”

His brain shorted out. He was almost sure he could see the synapses misfiring into a blinding mental static. He hadn’t… She hadn’t. There was no way She’d just asked _him_ that.

“At the table. Will you join Me at the table?”

Oh!

Oh.

Crowley dropped into the chair opposite Hers.

He was never, ever, ever going to sit in that chair. Ever again.

“Crowley,” She said softly.

He shuddered.

“Look at me.”

He froze.

It was a command. It was actually, literally a command from the Almighty.

And he froze.

Okay, no. Her feet hadn’t killed him. He had remained un-smited (“smitten” _continued_ to be a different thing entirely and had nothing at all to do with the current situation) when She’d turned up to explain the apple thing to Aziraphale. But that was different. _This_ was different. This was _Her_ —the Person for whom tiny Earthly words like “power” and “glory” and “love” and bloody well “holy” had been invented to fail to describe. (Also “fear” and “wrath” and “calamity”, but he was trying not to think about that.)

And She wanted _him_ to look at _Her_.

He looked.

He couldn’t not.

Her smile was like six thousand years of sunrises tumbled into a single, shining moment of fear and wonder.

He could, almost, bear to look at Her.

Almost.

He could not, after so long… so very long… bear to look anywhere else.

Her eyes, gazing calmly at him across his own kitchen table, somehow did not leave scorch marks in the air. Her eyes were like expanding nebulae, awash with contradictory colors, and like… like an eclipse, his brain produced as it frolicked on the edge of hysteria. You could look at them, if you dared. You might go blind. If She blinked too hard, he knew—he _knew_ —he would be dis-corporated, destroyed, and there wouldn’t be enough ash left behind to dust the chair he sat in.

Her eyebrows quivered and She blinked, slowly and deliberately, like a cat.

He snorted before he realized his lungs were moving and She—the Almighty, creator of the universe—twinkled at him in delight, before leaning comfortably back in Her chair.

“You interrupted the war.”

Had his heart been beating before? Crowley didn’t usually keep track. Given the tearing, icy explosion of pain in his chest, he was pretty sure it had stopped beating now.

Crowley nodded dumbly. He had done. He'd interrupted the war and he’d meant to. And it wasn’t like there was any point in denying it or trying to _explain_ it. Not to Her.

For a moment, She said nothing further. She just sat there and watched him, studied him. The euphoria of a shared joke, just seconds ago, was gone and vanished like it had never existed.

“There has always been a war, since you and your kind were cast out. Why don’t you get back to doing that?”

If his flat had suddenly turned into soup and started singing _Liar_ , Crowley would have been less shocked.

Not an hour ago, that exact question had been asked at Tree. That exact question was _always_ asked at Tree (or had been as soon as he and Aziraphale and the first Union members realized it was needed). Was She going to ask _all_ of the questions? _Was_ She asking?

Crowley swallowed. And then he did it again, since it seemed to work the first time.

“No,” he said.

Her expression, eyes burning myriad colors against the darkness of Her skin, didn’t so much as flicker.

“Do you think that there are no consequences to your actions, Serpent?”

His next breath hissed between his teeth. He refused to acknowledge the smell of burning sulphur that never left his nostrils. He refused to unleash the pitiful might of his fury and resignation before Her.

He couldn’t stop his hands from clenching into bloodless, rigid fists.

“No,” he answered, staring at Her.

“But you think that the humans should have no consequences for theirs? Famine doesn’t just happen.”

“It does, actually.” For a splintered, jagged, fragment of time he could hear Wensley’s voice echoing in his mind. “Humans are pretty good at making their own consequences.”

“Which you are supposed to be helping along. It’s been eight years since young Adam denied his birthright and you’ve been doing… what exactly? My host and your master’s…”

“He’s not my master,” Crowley interrupted.

He did. He interrupted Her.

She blinked at him again and this time the force of it flattened against his face like a slap. “… have things to be doing,” She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “A plague or two. No one would even notice, if it was in Africa.”

If his hands clenched any tighter, the bones would start snapping. “No.”

“Mm. Plagues never were to your taste, were they?” 

“No.”

Her head tilted slightly to one side and he flinched away, breath puffing from his nostrils in instinctive, visceral reaction. “The 14th century must have been hard for you.”

“What was the _point_ of it?” he demanded, leaning forward suddenly, before his brain could catch up and talk sense into him. “Do you even know how many of your precious humans died, terribly, because of that?”

Or maybe his brain had resigned itself to the inevitable and wanted to be done with it as soon as possible.

“I do,” She said softly (he might have admitted to “sadly”, if he hadn’t been so furious, but bollocks to that— _he’d_ lived through the Black Death). “Every single one of them. Do you?”

“No,” he snarled. “I lost count sometime after the first hundred million.” Really, he’d hated the 14th century. 

She just nodded. "One day, we might have that conversation."

Several eternities passed in the next eight seconds.

Crowley un-leaned. He uncurled his fingers and commanded them to settle on his thighs. This wasn’t how the questions were supposed to go. Granted, the questions had never been meant to come from Her anyway, but questioning _Her_ didn’t, historically, end well. (Though, again, he was already a demon. Destroying him was basically the only option left, if She didn’t like how this conversation was going. He was pretty sure it was the only option. He couldn’t think of anything else, but his imagination—though startling for a demon—couldn’t begin to compare with Hers. He hadn’t imagined the possibility of demonic existence before the Fall.)

“Littering, though,” She said, and his eyes snapped back into focus on Hers. “You’ve always been good at _that_. You haven’t even stopped doing that. Pollution...” She practically savored the word, like Aziraphale enjoying a sip of wine. “That’s just rearranging things that already exist. Why don’t you get back to that, then? The oceans are already a mess. A nuclear power plant or two having a meltdown would hardly change that. Oil spills are easy, if you feel the need to start slow.”

“No.” Had he ever, in his entire existence, said “no” so many times in so few minutes? (Obviously, yes. He'd answered these questions before. Shut up.)

She sighed and pinched the bridge of Her nose, like this entire conversation was tiring. “And I suppose, since you’re so squeamish about a little _sickness_ , that nudging death along is completely out of the question.”

“Yup.” The p popped pleasantly and Crowley tried to pretend that he was striving for casual insolence (a specialty of his, really) and was not a bare, fraying thread away from falling out of his chair.

“Of course.” Her hand dropped and She stared at him. Frowned at him. Glared? Her eyes flashed in colors he hadn’t seen since the first dawn of time.

Crowley stopped breathing. Stopped moving. Stopped everything.

“You really _are_ a fantastically unreliable piece of My creation, aren’t you?” She said, almost as if it was a new discovery, something She hadn’t known for thousands of years. “You were impatient as an angel and now you’re apathetic as a demon.”

The noise that came from his throat in response had no words in it and no word to describe it. Gabriel’d said this, or something similar, to him. He’d said this, or something similar, to various angels and demons. But coming from _Her_?

Every threadbare shred of hope, every uncertainly laid stone in the foundation and building of the Union, every faltering day spent trying to answer the question of “Now what?” since Armageddon didn’t happen… all of it vanished. All of it was gone. All of it was _useless_.

Stupid, arrogant, _absurd_ of him to think that the apple thing could have had anything to do with him and his ilk.

“Get. Back. To. Work.” She said and the words deafened him—echoing in his kitchen, rattling the dishes, scattering his sunglasses in razor fragments across the counter—and thundered through the rest of the flat. “Do your _job_.”

He stared at Her. At Her unspeakable beauty and majesty and...

She was going to kill him and he couldn’t help staring at Her.

“No,” he whispered.

“Why?”

It took him an immeasurable amount of time to remember that She wanted an answer, that this was, in fact, the next question on the script, and then he almost laughed. Relief, awe, disbelief, and residual panic swirled through him and tingled painfully through his limbs and wingtips.

“I quit.” That grin was shakier than he’d care to admit, under normal circumstances, but these were nothing at all like normal circumstances, so he’d take what he could get.

“You quit.”

“Mm hmm.”

“What is so very special about this place,” She waved at the flat and, by extension, the rest of the creation, “that you are willing to defy Heaven and Hell on its behalf?”

"Well..." Crowley pulled in a long breath and held it. He’d answered this question before, hundreds of times. He’d answered it honestly. That was the point. But now? He gulped and discovered that he _couldn't_ lie. And that he didn't want to. How much of that was self-preservation instinct, kicking in six thousand years too late, and how much was just... Her... he didn't know.

What was so very special about Earth?

Where was he supposed to start?

“They make things,” he blurted, finally. “All the time. New things. Art. And music. And cars.” And food. Don’t get the angel started on the _food_. “And… the kids. Chaotic, sticky little buggers, aren't they? S’no knowing what they’ll do next, but they… they start off as squirming blobs of dough with souls and might end up as _anything_ and they just… they ask questions _all_ the time and want to understand _everything_ and make up their own answers when they don’t like the ones they get. It’s _amazing_.”

Did She have any idea how fascinating Her own creation was? Could She? Could She not?

“Everything _changes_ here. Y’know the tides are all different? Different time, every day, different _water_ , different pattern of waves. Every day. Whoever was in charge of snowflakes and fingerprints and _leaves_ had too much time on their hands, back in the day. Wine from the same vineyard doesn’t taste the same from one harvest to the next. _No one_ can keep track of fashion and messing with designers is just way too much fun.” A bubble of wholly genuine amusement flashed across his face and he saw it reflect and gleam back at him from Hers.

“They… they _feel_ things. Messy, flash-in-the-pan explosions and bedrock, bone-deep convictions. And they just keep going about their days. They keep going and making and doing and I... I _love_ it.”

Crowley did not, usually, go on so long in response to that question. And he didn’t—even after all this time since the Fall, since the garden, since Aziraphale, since Adam and the Them and the lack of Armageddon—usually say it like _that_. (Sometimes, he just said "Ducks".) Admitting to how much he loved things was a level of vulnerability that he kept expecting to have used against him. Saying it all to _Her_ was like being stripped naked of clothes and human form and letting Her stare at his innermost being.

Which, granted, was the only way She ever saw anyone, so really he was just getting around to remembering that She’d been seeing _that_ since She showed up. Piss off. The fact that he could form sentences right now was impressive.

Silently, She stood up, leaned across the table, took his face in Her hands, and set Her burning, searing, comforting lips to his forehead in a kiss.

Crowley fought to stay still. He fought to breathe. He clung to existence and Her hands and everything else disappeared in a haze of love and terror and acceptance.

And then She was closing the fridge door and sitting back down. In Her hands was a Cox’s Orange Pippin.

“In memory of the first Adam,” She said quietly, “and his curiosity and love of life and of Eve.”

She took a bite. White teeth tore through the skin and flesh of the apple and She chewed and swallowed and offered the fruit to him.

Crowley took it. He almost dropped it. “In memory of the second Adam,” he responded, voice strangled to the edge of hearing, “and his determination and love of Tadfield, his friends, and the world.”

He took a bite. It was from the same batch of Coxes he’d taken to Tree. It was just an English apple. He was _sure_ that no apple had ever tasted like this in the history of cultivation.

“Oh,” he heard himself saying around his mouthful, “and stars. I really like the stars. And Aziraphale.” He hadn’t mentioned the angel before. He had a habit, a long-established habit, a _carefully cultivated_ habit, of not mentioning the angel around beings who might object to his… arrangement? relationship?… involvement with the angel. But it wasn’t like She didn’t already know.

Her lips quirked and She nodded. “I rather like those things, Myself.”

They ate their apple.

It wasn’t, he supposed, technically a Tree. Since She came to Aziraphale in what Crowley (after he’d calmed down) called Her “ineffable beam of light mode” to give him the apple thing, Tree had _always_ included at least one angel and at least one demon. It was one of the cornerstones of the Union.

But here he was. Him. Crowley. Fallen Angel. Demon. Serpent of the Garden. Eating an apple with the Almighty Herself. And he was very good at ignoring technicalities.

It wasn’t Tree. It was altogether better and infinitely worse than that.

When they’d finished, She set the apple core down on his table, licked Her fingers, wiped them on Her clothes, and reached across the table to run them lightly down his cheek.

“Thank you, Anthony,” She said.

And while he was still trying to recover (and not inhale a few last bits of apple) from the unspeakable, indescribable experience of hearing his name on Her tongue, She… let go.

The precisely restrained and hidden power of Her burst forth in something for which he had no other reference point than “wings”. Her wings filled the kitchen, the flat, the Earth itself. Her wings filled him and covered him and he stared, unblinking, un-moving, completely overwhelmed and unconscious of the tears streaming from his eyes, into the face of Her glory. Still curbed, still dimmed, still mindful of the physical limitations of Earthly creations and of one phenomenally inadequate demon.

For the first time in over six thousand years, the Shadow of Her Presence fell on Crowley and he was not afraid. He couldn’t be. Where She was, where She loved, there could be no fear. Oh, there was knowledge still. The knowledge that She could blink him from existence was as unshakable as ever. But She was there and She loved him and he was not afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel the urge to debate about the what-ifs of post-Armageddidn't Experimental Theology, feel free! I'm over [here](https://istezada.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


End file.
